It's Simple Darling
by scarlettnoble
Summary: When she cornered Lydia in the hall between classes, she listened for the uptick in her pulse, the quick, skipping thrum of frustration that thundered alongside denied attraction. Set during season 2. Erica x Lydia. Mentions of Jackson, Boyd and Isaac. Mature themes. One Shot.


Lydia could count with no fingers the amount of times she'd had a crush. It had never seemed unusual to her. She fancied herself predisposed to decline the inconvenience, lacking in desire to have her emotional feathers ruffled by a person not of her choosing. Sure, she had explored the social paradigms, picked a mate that made reputable sense.

She had approached romance with the same critical perspective she approached most anything else; a series of pros and cons weighed against necessity and personal benefit. It seemed, by and large, something better fit for her later life. At sixteen, at seventeen, she was taking reverent steps towards the ultimate direction of her life and Jackson, while she may have loved him, was a distraction, an inconvenience that boded poorly for her emotional growth.

He had gone, she had resented him for it, resented him still. (While he was inconvenient in a lot of ways he was convenient in a few prominent others.) It didn't have to be the blissed out, heart hammering, breath caught in your throat sort of romance Allison spoke of when she mentioned Scott in order for it to leave an impression, a bitter taste in her mouth when it was lost. Lydia was a (non) lover scorned.

If she had been relatively sure before that she held no true investment in the notion she now knew for certain. She had no desire for the kicked up notches of her heartbeat, the flushed cheeks of the endeared. She did not want the tells and trials of a traitorous heart.

But as life was wont to give her things she did not request, she received those things anyway.

It was a wondrous thing at first; inscrutable and questioned, baffling in its very nature. She had written off the quiet yearning in her chest as an unusual case of jealousy, observing the thick upward curl of Erica's eyelashes, the pouted, full measure of her lips. It hadn't occurred to her to consider it otherwise, to think it might be something else.

Had it been someone else, anyone else, the indiscretion might have slipped by inconsequentially. Lydia, at the time, would have cited this preferable. But it was Erica, Erica who, with her new sense of self worth and full to the brim confidence, had made a point of noticing people noticing her.

She had mercilessly faulted Stiles for being polite enough not to look at her bust with a sneer that Lydia would have admired had she been present. She walked the halls of Beacon Hills high school with the self assurance of someone that could smell the sharp twist of hormones around her, the bitter notes of jealousy lingering below the surface. Erica had, without doubt but with intrigue, recognized the sweet smelling naïve curiosity that Lydia boasted whenever her gaze lingered Erica's way.

Closer, when she cornered Lydia in the hall between classes, she listened for the uptick in her pulse, the quick, skipping thrum of frustration that thundered alongside denied attraction. The predatory gleam in her eyes only served to douse Lydia in a bouquet of hormones and the frustrations that came with them, her blood surfacing warm and inviting along the pale expanse of her cheeks.

Lydia masked her attraction charmingly beneath outrage, cursing invariably beneath her breath when Erica gently chided, "Oh, Lydia."

It was the condescending turns of phrase that made Lydia's blood boil, firing her up with an instinct to fight back. She had narrowed her brows in Erica's direction most times, sought for words of a snappy, snarky variety to set the girl straight. She had come up short often, groaned in her frustration and infuriatingly conceded to staying put when Erica dangled herself as bait.

The perplexities of her indefinite feelings turned over and over in Lydia's head to the point of further unintelligibility. She thought of Erica in uncertain, tentative and curious, frustrating terms. Mulling over exchanges at school while she lay in bed blinking up at her dark ceiling merited huffs of indignant disbelief. Lydia was loathe to believe that of all people Erica, with her newly sharpened canines, had the ability to get under her skin where she was neither invited nor wanted.

Pursuing the improbable possibility of such a thing being true prompted a dread laden post coital laced with guilt, her fingers slick with an arousal Lydia hadn't accounted for. Sensibly, objectively, she remarked this turn of events as psychologically cliché; finding a thrill in the unanticipated, the liberation of what people likely expected from her and she from herself as opposed to the (regretfully) true nature of things.

A last ditch effort to refute the truths Lydia had allowed herself to grow accustomed, when she was next cornered by Erica, was impractical. Erica had appeared at her window as if invited, as if her illicit lover and remarked the video she was watching with a confident, "You would sound like you're enjoying it more than she does," and a salacious curl of her lips as she descended through the threshold.

Lydia had paused, turned without fear, though with her heart ticking back to calm after its brief foray into surprise, to regard Erica haughtily. "You're awfully sure of yourself."

Nonchalant Erica countered easily, "One of us has to be," added, "I'm sure of you, too," as she dropped with excessive grace onto the edge of Lydia's bed. "So," she hitched up a brow, let one edge of her lips stretch farther into a smirk, "you ready to admit you've got a thing for the big bad wolf?"

Lydia rolled her eyes with a disdain so strong Erica smiled at her predictable response. She pointed out with unnecessary breeze, "That didn't sound like a no."

"That's because," and she was surprised not to sound so timid, "It wasn't." Determined and concise Lydia shifted to her side, resting on an elbow and tossing her mane of fire behind her shoulders. "But don't think this means I like you." She spoke with an emphasis that left things clear, had Erica laughing softly and agreeing, 'wouldn't dream of it,' with a smile that was wry and a look in her eyes that was neither offended nor meant to offend.

She crawled forward to box Lydia in with knees either side of her hips, arms crowding her shoulders. In a way that caught Lydia's attention her back dipped and curved, left her behind tauntingly up in the air. For the inability to dig her fingers in Lydia reached instead for the back of Erica's neck and brought their lips together in a drag of impassioned inevitability. A second hand taste of Lydia's lipgloss drew a moan from the back of Erica's throat and Lydia pressed her only faintly glossed lips against Erica's with a smirk of victory.

They kissed viciously with sharp nails and the keen sting of teeth biting down, fighting for a surrender neither of them was willing to provide. Each action was underlined with competition as Lydia grazed the shell of Erica's ear with her teeth, as Erica rolled her hips, applying pressure where Lydia would come to need it most.

Had she a want to Erica could have reined dominant in proceedings without difficulty. With her wolf so close to the surface her natural strength had Lydia beat without effort though she obligingly fell to her back under Lydia's physical suggestion, meeting the downward thrust of her hips with an upward cant of her own.

Her teeth worried over Lydia's bottom lip with intent, bruising, and she sucked the lower volume of Lydia's mouth into her own with a sloppy kiss while Lydia hastily fumbled through the eye hooks of her corset, throwing the material apart. Erica's palms smoothed up her thighs, beneath her skirt, to settle over her lace covered hips. It wasn't the sting of Erica's claws scratching at her skin that prompted Lydia's protest but the eventual tear away of her underwear that had her throwing Erica back against the mattress forcefully, chasing Erica's lips with comment of "You're replacing those."

Erica met Lydia's kiss with a part of her lips, letting her tongue slide into Lydia's mouth. She hummed obligingly into their kiss while, claws retracted, her hand slipped between Lydia's legs. Lydia gasped softly and Erica grinned, pulled them up into a position more seated and nosed at Lydia's jaw, shrugging out of the straps of her corset. "Can do, Princess."

Three weeks later she climbed through Lydia's window (now perpetually left unlocked and unlatched) and flung a scrap of lace in Lydia's direction. There was a bag in her hand with a bra to match.

Without needing to be told Erica never stayed. Rarely did she even hang around for the afterglow, during which Lydia was almost pleasant company, catlike in her stretches, mewling as Erica assured the marks on Lydia's hips, the insides of her thighs, would last more than a few days. They spoke exclusively in sharp tongues and mocking tones until one day they agreeably fell against Lydia's pillows tangled in one another loose limbed and in bliss.

But sleeping together was no fringe benefit, they each consoled themselves. It was a matter of convenience, as opposed to occasions when Erica would riffle through Lydia's drawers in search of something to refresh her outfit for school. Showering together was a benefit, fooling around before Lydia was picked up by Allison was a benefit. The thrill of their secret, of knowing that no one quite cottoned onto the tied up blue button down Erica wore with her leather pants as belonging to Lydia added an edge of excitement to their affair.

Though there were speculations, wafts of Lydia's scent lingering where it ought not to, or even of the two of them mingling together, sheer improbability rendered any accusers sure they were wrong. For the most part, though they both ran with wolves, their packs were largely separate. Erica maintained a distance with Isaac, Boyd and Derek. While Lydia associated with Allison, Scott and Stiles their paths rarely crossed out of coincidence.

It was curious perhaps that they continued to see one another by choice, that in choosing to do so they grew more blasé about where they saw one another. Erica would run her hand up Lydia's thigh in the back aisles of the library, Lydia would pull her into an empty classroom to kiss her pressed against a wall.

Mentions of increasing suspicion from Isaac would only cause Erica to shrug a shoulder, direct him an aloof look and feign ignorance on the subject. She would throw out suggestions of trying new perfume while Boyd looked at her plainly, quirked his lips in a fashion that expressed he was onto her. Erica gradually discovered herself considering so what? So what if people knew.

Lydia was the consequence of any so what, however; a vehemently opposed figure who had softened only some to Erica's continual presence. She regarded the blonde now with a measure of ownership, staking a claim more obviously as time passed on. She would spray her perfume onto Erica's clothes; persuade Erica into her own when circumstance deemed it logical and not unusual. Erica had yet to decide if Lydia's actions were derived from a desire to be exclusive or a desire for Erica to belong exclusively to her (Lydia Martin's: do not touch.) A novel concept.

She hoped that unlike past ventures, she wasn't wasting her heart on a girl who would only disregard it.

While she could hear the relaxed, comforted beat of Lydia's pulse when they lay together at nights, could smell the contentment that rolled off her when they were together, it was actions on the contrary that left her worried. Lydia made no effort to specify that things had changed in any which way, leaving them suspended in a routine of undetermined yet familiar intimacy.

They were intimate in a way Lydia hadn't experienced before. Fond in their touches rather than always hasty and competing, they learnt how to please one another instead of lording their instinct over the other as a measure of power. The more she learnt of Erica's body the more willingly Lydia conceded to the color that Erica brought to her cheeks, the lazy smiles that dripped over her lips under Erica's skillful fingers working out stress formed kinks in her neck, the small of her back and between her shoulders.

Their relationship altered to one entirely more companionable and Lydia welcomed the shift in dynamic without despairing, without the existential crisis she would have expected. She realized her crush and its slowly dug depths with a flood of warmth one Friday afternoon, her fingers tangled in Erica's hair and Erica's lips at her neck.

Erica mouthed at a particularly sensitive spot just below her collarbone and unprecedentedly Lydia said, "I think we should tell people." She grasped at Erica's shoulders, writhed beneath her as Erica's hips sank deliciously into her own and the blonde retorted, "You want people to know we're messing around?" Lydia could hear the speculation in Erica's voice even with the blood rushing through her eardrums.

Her breath sounded out harshly against Erica's neck and Lydia hummed, licked her lips to prelude a disparaging, "no.." that faded into a rather agreeable 'yes' when Erica mouthed at her breast through the thin material of her shirt.

Somewhat breathlessly she regaled, "You said you were sure," her back arching off the mattress, chest pressing to Erica's mouth greedily. "I'm sure, too."

Erica tugged her nipple with bared teeth, peered up at her with eyes that glowed wolfishly. "Okay," she agreed. She pulled Lydia's shirt over her stomach, shimmed down to press her lips below Lydia's navel. "We'll tell people then." Her tongue drew flat in a warm stripe up Lydia's abdomen, carefully unfastened the buttons of her skirt and she behaved as if the most revelatory moment of their relationship hadn't allowed roots to settle in where she previously refused them purchase.

Later when she came it was with a broken sob and Lydia's fingers buried inside her. The flat of her palm pressed against Erica's pubic bone and Lydia's tongue between her legs making her tremor.


End file.
